David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night

July 13–Sept 30, 2018

Exhibition works

11 total
Gallery 5
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Gallery 5

Man pointing a gun.
Man pointing a gun.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), History Keeps Me Awake at Night (For Rilo Chmielorz), 1986. Acrylic, spray paint, and collaged paper on composition board, 72 x 84 in. (170.2 x 200 cm). Collection of John P. Axelrod. Photograph by Ron Cowie

Gallery 5

In the mid-1980s Wojnarowicz began to incorporate his disparate signs and symbols into complex paintings. A fierce critic of a society he saw degrading the environment and ostracizing the outsider, Wojnarowicz made compositions that were dense with markers of industrial and colonized life. These include railroad tracks and highways, sprawling cities and factory buildings, maps and currency, nuclear power diagrams and crumbling monuments. Interspersed among them are symbols that he connected to fragility, such as blood cells, animals and insects, and the natural world. Wojnarowicz used these depictions as metaphors for a culture that devalues the lives of those on the periphery of mainstream culture. He made these paintings at a time when AIDS was ravaging New York, particularly the gay community. Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, President Ronald Reagan did not mention it publicly until 1985. By the end of that year, in New York alone there already had been 3,766 AIDS-related deaths.

Installation view of David Wojnarowicz exhibition.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz exhibition.

Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13–September 30, 2018). From left to right: The Newspaper as National Voodoo: A Brief History of the U.S.A., 1986; History Keeps Me Awake at Night (For Rilo Chmielorz), 1986; The Death of American Spirituality, 1987; Queer Basher/Icarus Falling, 1986; Unfinished Film (A Fire in My Belly), 1986-87; Unfinished Film (Mexico, etc… Peter, etc…), 1987; Unfinished Film (with sequence in memory of Peter Hujar), c. 1987; Unfinished Film (Mexico Film Footage II), c. 1988; A Worker, 1986; The Birth of Language II, 1986; Das Reingold: New York Schism, 1987; Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, 1986. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

Installation view of Gallery 5

Installation view of David Wojnarowicz exhibition.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz exhibition.

Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018). From left to right: Das Reingold: New York Schism, 1987; Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, 1986; Dung Beetles II: Camouflage Leads Us Into Destruction, 1986; Peter Hujar, David Lighting Up, 1985; Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II), 1981; Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, 1981; Mexican Crucifix, 1987; Peter Hujar Dreaming/Yukio Mishima: Saint Sebastian, 1982; I Use Maps Because I Don’t Know How to Paint, 1984; The Newspaper as National Voodoo: A Brief History of the U.S.A., 1986. Photograph by Ron Amstutz

Man pointing a gun.
Man pointing a gun.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), History Keeps Me Awake at Night (For Rilo Chmielorz), 1986. Acrylic, spray paint, and collaged paper on composition board, 72 x 84 in. (170.2 x 200 cm). Collection of John P. Axelrod. Photograph by Ron Cowie

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), History Keeps Me Awake at Night (For Rilo Chmielorz), 1986

In History Keeps Me Awake at Night (for Rilo Chmielorz) Wojnarowicz presents a dystopic vision of American life. Presenting simulated American currency and bureaucratic emblems alongside symbols of crime, monstrosity, and chaos, the painting’s threatening imagery runs counter to the apparently placid sleep of the man below. If the painting is about fear, perhaps the fear of staring down AIDS, Wojnarowicz presents it as an endemic condition in which new fears are built upon historical ones.

Painting of two faces.
Painting of two faces.

David Wojnarowicz, Das Reingold: New York Schism, 1987. Acrylic and collaged paper on board, 48 1/4 × 72 × 1 3/4 in. (122.6 × 182.9 × 4.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; promised gift of Emily Fisher Landau P.2010.284. Image © The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W Gallery, photograph by Tim Nighswander/Imaging4Art

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), Das Reingold: New York Schism, 1987

A nightmarish allegory of violence and capitalism, Das Reingold: New York Schism makes reference to Richard Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold (1854), in which the holder of a magical ring will gain the power to rule the world should he renounce love. This narrative assumed particular power at a moment when artists were joining the group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) to protest the profiteering of pharmaceutical companies and government mismanagement of the AIDS crisis.  

Four panels of mountains and rocks with a figure in each panel.
Four panels of mountains and rocks with a figure in each panel.

The Death of American Spirituality, 1987. Spray paint, acrylic, and collage on plywood, two panels, 81 × 88 in. (205.7 × 223.5 cm) overall. Private collection. © 1987 The Peter Hujar Archive LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), The Death of American Spirituality, 1987

The Death of American Spirituality contains a number of Wojnarowicz’s recurring symbols and  imagery densely layered in a single composition. With its radically juxtaposed motifs that suggest different temporalities—from geologic landforms to emblems of the American West and the Industrial Revolution—the mythical tableau depicts destruction proliferating alongside technological advancement and geographic conquest. 

Rocky red and grey houses mountains exploding.
Rocky red and grey houses mountains exploding.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, 1986. Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 78 ¾ in. × 157 ½ in. (200 × 400 cm). Private collection, Image courtesy Daniel Buchholz and Christopher Müller, Cologne, photograph by Nick Ash.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, 1986

Artists

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